Coal Power

By: Pan Pan & Lynn :P

Coal is a black sedimentary rock that is used to produce energy for electricity throughout our world. It is made out of chemical bonds of fossil fuels and plants. When
coal-plant.gif
How Coal is Form
the dead plant matter touches hot temperature, it turns into peat, then after a while the peat is converted into lignite and over a period of time, it is turned into coal. The second initial energy source is hydrogen, sulfur, nitrogen and oxygen.Coal is the largest source of energy in the generation of electricity worldwide.

How Does It Work?

Coal Power's initial energy source is the chemical inside the coal, form from the prehistoric biomass which is eventually turns into a fossil fuel. In order to produce
coal_fired_powerplants_process.jpg
Process of Coal Making
electricity from coal, you must go through a few steps to process coal, just like any other energy source.To start of, coal is burnt in the boiler to generate heat but it also includes a fan below the boiler for air supply. Afterwards, the heat heats up the water and after heating up the water, it turns into steam. Within that process, the steam piped into the turbine which is connected to the generator, rotates the generator rotor which produce electricity. Finally, the electircity would flow through the transformer to homes to support electrical needs in the everyday household. But the electricity won't support the home for 24 hours for the fact that the electricity goes up and down with the time of day. The devices needed for this process are generator, turbine, boiler, air supply,condenser, stack and a transformer. The water that is used to make electricity, is sent back to the boiler to get reused again.

094423coal_electricity_page_pie_chart_highlight_right_column.jpg
The Percentage of Use of Coal Power

How Widespread Is It?

Many different continenets and countries throughout the world, use coal power as an energy source, such as China being the most coal user in the world with

1,310,000,000 amount of coal. In the world we live in, 40 countries tend to use coal power which is 39% of the world and anually, the world uses

4,558,273,000 tons of coal. South Africa uses 70,500,000 tons of coal, Egypt uses 2,200,000 tons of coal, Ghana 30,000 tons of coal, Nigeria uses 70,000 of coal and these are the countries that uses coal power in the continent of Africa.

world-coal-consumption-1-400x281.jpg
Places Which uses Coal Power

How Efficient Is It?

You might be wondering how efficient coal power is, since it sends out 6.67 kilo watt of energy. Well, to light a 100 watts light bulb for 24 hours, it needs 714 pounds (325 kg) of coal. So imagine to light up a hole house with more than one light bulb. To develop this method, power plants and devices using this method cost 4 million per year for a 24 hour bass. Also 3,337,000 kg of coal is burnt per day which is 3,337 tons per day.





Benefits and Drawbacks of this method

Why do countries tend to use coal power than any other energy source because its:

  • easily burned & turn into heat energy or power

  • easily distributed throughtout the worldmine-diagram-i7.gif

  • inexpensive

  • large existing reserves

  • cool the water temperature

  • it can wait until energy needed

  • ready to be loaded as soon as demand heats up

  • some coal already burned can be building material



Every energy resource have a weak point of it and so does the coal power:

bad water situation to be more worse

  • uses up lots of water

  • nonrenewable

  • very fast used up

  • burning fossil fuels releases carbon dioxide

  • more dirtiermine-diagram-i2.jpg

Since it has drawbacks of this method, it also effects the enviroment such as:

  • effect weather climate

  • pollutes the enviroment since it releases carbon dioxide from burning fuels

  • Causes acid rain

  • coal mining releases gases in the air

  • creates more levels in the atmospheric carbon dioxide

  • warmer climate

  • being easily burn creates mroe atmospheric carbon dioxide

  • global warming

Role in the Future

In my opinion, coal pow
coal-fired-power-plant1.jpg
Pollution that Coal Power Cause
er is going to be more less widespread since it is polluting our planet Earth. So I think that since our planet is getting more developed, humans will use a way of energy source that does not pollute our Earth. It will decrease the human population in its use because it is causing global warming which is heating up our planet. If another method decreases and is not available, I think that this method will increase because coal power is cheaper and also the countries already use it because its easier to take in. But on the other hand, the increase in another method such as geothermal, hydroelectric, solar, nuclear, wind or tidal power will cause it to decrease because the other resource will be more widespread throughout the world which means they will have more resource of it and which makes most of the people use the other method. In the future, the energy used for this method will be less available because after a long while, all the coals might be gone and can't be found underground anymore. So this is what I think will happen in the future.

Bibliography

http://wiki.answers.com/Q/What_are_the_advantages_and_disadvantages_of_using_coal_to_generate_electricity

http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/ene_coa_con-energy-coal-consumption

http://holbert.faculty.asu.edu/eee463/coal.html

Image:
http://geology.com/news/category/asia.shtml

http://www.keepbanderabeautiful.org/coal-plant.gif

http://erniemallorca.com/2011/08/13/coal-fired-power-plant-advantages-and-disadvantages-of-using-coal-to-generate-electricity/
http://www.google.com/imgres?hl=en&biw=1280&bih=929&tbm=isch&tbnid=eTIIAkp5qjeQfM:&imgrefurl=http://onlinekeralafriends.com/kerala-friends/52/mine-diagram&docid=3U4MnojgE2tLWM&imgurl=http://onlinekeralafriends.com/kerala-friends/52/mine-diagram-i7.gif&w=534&h=359&ei=2Jq9T9CYBsmhmQXBjvEq&zoom=1&iact=hc&vpx=656&vpy=152&dur=2138&hovh=184&hovw=274&tx=116&ty=58&sig=117166458294973002267&page=1&tbnh=133&tbnw=162&start=0&ndsp=29&ved=1t:429,r:3,s:0,i:78